Starfinder: If I Made A Setting …

Before I begin, let me just say that I am not saying that JBE is definitely going to be supporting Starfinder. We are thinking about it very hard. If nothing else, I am thinking about it because I am personally excited about it and I am thinking about what kind of setting I would like to create for my own home game. Having said that, should we decide to support Starfinder, the thoughts I post about it will be incorporated into any product I release in the future. And if we do not support the game, these posts will be entertaining and will help you think on what you want in your Starfinder game.

So far, I have posted two little thought blurbs about the setting to various places. I’m just copying and pasting them here so they are all in one place, and so those that missed them can read them as well.

Our setting is not going to be “able to be worked into Paizo’s setting,” like we did with Shadowsfall. It is going to be a distinct setting that is its own thing. We’d have a backdrop of a recently-ended major war (50-ish years ago, short enough ago that you’ll encounter those that fought in the war, long enough ago that your character didn’t fight in the war and those that did are too old to help with what you are doing now). The world humans and the other core book races originated from isn’t gone; the world has been captured by some major monstrous race that has their own empire. With the exception of a few worlds far from … not-Earth (I’ll call it for the moment), humans have no home to call their own. They exist in other star empires as a beaten and conquered race, but not a broken race. Definitely some hints of Shadowsfall in there as far as theme goes.

We’d develop the setting at first only just enough to make adventures. That would be our initial focus: adventures. This was actually why we have been putting so much effort into doing Deadly Delves, so that we can eventually make a setting with a focus on adventures first.

The setting needs an alliance of major enemy races that only lasted for so long and then fell apart, which is why the conquest of humans and other core races was not complete. They devolved to their own infighting and were unable to finish the job.

Anyone that knows me knows I love undead as a bad guy. They area always fun to kill and you seldom have a moral quandary about it. So one of my Axis of Evil races should be undead. How do you do undead in a science fantasy game? Well you make them cybernetic. They are animated through a combination of magic and technology. Some are more magical in nature. Some are more technological. So an undead cyborg. Cybernetic Necromancy. Combining the two, we have Cycroms (TM).